


If I Could Find a Way

by WrithingBeneathYou



Category: Naruto
Genre: For Naruto Magic Week, Illustrated, M/M, Mage!Itama, Seer!Izuna, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 02:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19714558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou
Summary: While Izuna knows that offering gifts of great magic as a prelude to courtship is an ancient, outdated tradition, he can't help it. He's a romantic at heart.Going back to the past to save Hashirama's long-dead brother might have been overkill, though.





	If I Could Find a Way

**Author's Note:**

> This is my prompt fill for day 5 of [Naruto Magic Week](https://naruto-magic-week.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr, "Time Turner."

Itama first hears of the mage purge over a late-evening dinner. He catches every third word as he and his brothers are warned in no uncertain terms not to stray too far from their family’s small, warded hamlet. However, the rare gift of yakiniku is far too tempting for an eight year old to focus on rules and the like. He stuffs his cheeks with grilled meat past the point of propriety and nearly chokes when he receives a stern prod from Tobirama’s elbow. It’s with only a hint of consternation that he slows down and rhythmically bounces his knee, eager for the next bite. 

He doesn’t understand why the adults all seem so worked-up, anyways. There’s not any real danger here. The woods see to that.

The forest spirits around them have always been his friends. He trusts them implicitly and dances to their tune at night, crunching through the leaves on child-sized feet so steeped in magic they glow. The woody fingers of the dryads are rough against his palms as they guide him to secret glens.

Itama is the safest he’s ever been in their hammocks.

Even the river sprites—though they’re capricious at the best of times— braid his hair and gurgle bawdy jokes in his ear. He’s too young to understand the filth embedded in the seemingly innocuous jests, but they made him laugh all the same.

And if the land didn’t devour the stupid, magic-blind humans within the first league, surely his family would crush them with a thousand spells at once. It’s kind of what they do.

Yakiniku is way more important.

Though, in hind-sight, maybe he should have set down his chopsticks and listened for once.

***

Panting from exertion, Izuna races through a stretch of land that’s both familiar and not. The boles of trees rise up around him like spires, only responding to his innate magics after a moment of consideration. Their leaves rustle, agitated, but ultimately bow to the patina of Hashirama’s magic on his skin.

He nervously glances to his watch and then the time-turner in his fist. Tobirama’s prototype only allows for five minutes in the past and he’s going to be cutting it close even if the thrice-cursed woods stop trying to trip him up.

“Shit,” he hisses so vehemently the air smokes. There’s no helping it. Despite Hashirama’s very firm warning that another slip into the ether may leave him permanently blind, Izuna lets loose the seal on his second sight.

His eyes turn red, like blood spilled into a whirlpool, as his soul ignites with unchecked primordial magic. 

He allows a flood of inquiry to fan out through the forest, alighting on each stone and branch without exception. Skeins of possibility unfold. A million conceivable futures roll out before him, but the brightest of them all coalesce and point straight towards the East.

His legs begin eating away at the distance before his mind has a chance to process what he’s doing. Every whipcord sting of branches goads him to run faster and faster.

Fate allows him to tap into a vast reserve of strength typically denied him—in this, his second sight has served its duty.

However, before he can ease back on the roaring flood of power feeding his Sharingan, a secondary shimmer catches his eye. His tomoe instinctively begin to spin faster until they form concentric rings. The forest is set ablaze in a wash of purple. Millions of gossamer filaments gather the sun and tell a story through the spaces suspended between them.

Life threads, Izuna realizes. He’s seeing the ties that anchor souls to their world, and every single one of them acts as a vector to a single point of singularity.

In that moment, the trees are inconsequential—he sees the world as if it’s buoyed upon the glassy surface of a lake. And that’s when he notices the unique, two-toned hair of a brother Hashirama lost long ago.

Izuna clenches his teeth so hard they grind. Every step puts an ache in his bones. The Rinnegan devours his sight and makes the world tunnel.

But still, he runs.

A massive shinigami—looming closer with each stride—looks up at him and unfurls a rain-lily smile, delicate and sweet.

“Don’t,” Izuna rasps, voice as small as his seeming insignificance in this moment. “For the blood of my fathers and the family I’ve made, please don’t take him.” Oddly enough, the shinigami’s crooked hand hovers for a heartbeat, then pulls back. Its smile gapes wide until it’s nothing but teeth.

There’s a crack of thunder without sound and Izuna winces at the enormity of the voice that fills his head. _You risk much to come out of time. I will honor the bond of your ancestors by granting you this one boon, Uchiha Izuna. You have thirty seconds. Do not disappoint me, little seer._

This easy capitulation is surprising, but Izuna learned long ago not to question beings of power. The forest slams back into his vision, blurrier than it’s ever been.

_Twenty-five seconds._

His robes flap open like the wings of the ravens his cousin so favors as he closes the distance between himself and Itama.

_Twenty seconds._

A sigil flares brightly in his mind as he opens the gates of kinetic potential in his heart.

_Fifteen seconds._

Ozone builds around him, earthy and thick. In the space between breaths, he strikes.

_Ten seconds._

Great washes of blood splash across the leaf litter and a half dozen giftless humans fall with a bolt of lightning speared through their livers. Clubs and curse wards clatter to the ground, useless in ash-filled hands.

_Five seconds._

Izuna stumbles to a standstill amidst the gore, wheezing and clutching his knees, but teary eyed and smiling none the less. He looks up to Itama’s face, still round and ruddy with the hallmarks of youth.

“Hey, half-pint,” he gasps. “I can’t wait to meet you in a few years. You better not be taller than me.”

There’s a flash of confusion amidst the fear written in Itama’s mismatched eyes, then the world begins to crack and crumble away. The trees give way to a spacious travertine courtyard, shimmering with layered afterimages of roughhewn stone and the dust of erosion in rapid sequence.

Cold fingers close over Izuna’s hand and divest him of the time turner prototype, scattering it to the wind.

 _Goodbye, Uchiha Izuna. May this gift of a life serve you well in your pursuit of Senju Hashirama’s favor. However, upon your return, inform the necromancer that while I will tolerate his dabbling in the reanimation of hollow flesh, time is my purview alone. I will not allow him to adulterate the natural order of things._ The shinigami’s tone has the same wry, put-upon quality Madara always sports when bemoaning his marriage to Tobirama. Loudly. Usually over breakfast in the Great Hall.

When the space between world closes to him and he slams back into the bounds of a hastily drawn containment circle, Izuna laughs.

He laughs louder and louder until his stomach aches.

**Author's Note:**

> Itama does, in fact, wind up being taller.


End file.
